Huffington Post: In an interview with the Esquire magazine, former President Bill Clinton says those in his party should ignore any grief from Republicans on health care reform, because the GOP is just waiting for Democrats to “mess up.”

Clinton told Esquire magazine that lawmakers should put together the best health care measure for President Barack Obama, even if it must be fixed later.

“All we have to worry about is getting things done and doing them as well as we can,” Clinton said. “Don’t even worry about the Republicans. Let them figure out what they’re going to stand for. ‘Cause as long as they’re sitting around waiting for us to mess up, they don’t have a chance.”

Unlike his failed effort to revamp health care in the mid-1990s, Clinton said he believes Obama will overhaul the system.

Comparing Obama’s busy first year in office to his own, Clinton said, “It’s going to have a different ending ? he’s going to get health care reform.”

Clinton also laid out his take on the GOP’s strategy in the Aug. 7 interview.

“The broad canvas is that the Republicans are trying to figure out whether to keep playing their old songs or try to write a new script,” he said. “Meanwhile, they’re hoping this president will fail, and they’re trying to spook the Democrats from the more vulnerable districts into helping him fail.”

Clinton recalled how Democrats regained control of Congress in 2006, which Republicans had held since 1994.

“I remember I told Hillary the morning after the election, I said, ‘If we don’t nominate a convicted felon, our nominee’s gonna be president,’” he said.

Obama won the Democratic nomination after a long primary battle with the former president’s wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The interview is published in the October issue, on stands Sept. 14. [ READ MORE ] [ ON HUFFINGTON POST ]

References:

1. In the WashingtonPost Steven Pearlstein writes: It’s disappointing that Obama must also overcome the timidity of some of his own political advisers who seem to have succumbed to the dreaded Washington disease, whose symptoms are a fixation on polls and an unnatural gullibility for conventional wisdom. It is one thing to accommodate political reality but quite another to sacrifice first principles, embrace bad policy in the name of compromise and capitulate to political thuggery. Obama’s task Wednesday is to demonstrate the same sort of leadership, not only by laying down the moral and economic imperative of health-care reform but by coming clean on some of the tradeoffs that will be necessary in achieving it. [ READ MORE ]

2. Myths and falsehoods about health care reform — Media Matters for America identifies and debunks four more myths and falsehoods surrounding the health care reform debate, bringing the total to 18.

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